Cheyenne Pass

by Lauran Paine

  Ethan brought up his carbine, trained it forward, took in a deep breath, and stepped out into that small clearing.

  The downed man heard something and could make out vaguely what he thought to be the silhouette of a man. He stared into the black, wrinkling his brow in a mighty effort to identify the shape, couldn’t, and let his head drop back.

  “Shoot and be damned to you,” the man muttered thickly.

  MacCallister went closer, leaned his Winchester upon a rock, and knelt beside the man. Klinger stood off a little, watching the shadows of this ghostly place without relinquishing his carbine. He was not as interested in the identity of the injured man near his feet as he evidently was in the possibility of there being enemies in the surrounding night.

  MacCallister bent far over, looked, straightened back, and said: “It’s Travis Browne, and he’s been bad hurt.”

  Klinger seemed to relax at the announcement. He shuffled in a little closer, grounded his carbine, and bent earthward, trying to make out DeFore’s ranch foreman. He couldn’t really see him, so he asked: “Can you tell if he was shot or just hurt from the fall after his horse was shot?”

  MacCallister got Browne’s head up and his shoulders cradled in his arm. He gently shook the injured man. “Travis? Travis, what happened? Who fired that shot, and what was all the rough riding about?”

  Browne stirred a little, tried to make out the face of the man who was asking him questions.

  “It’s me … MacCallister. What happened, Travis?”

  “Ethan?” Browne said, his hand moving up to his head. “How’d you get here? Were you one of them?”

  “One of who, Travis?”

  Browne closed his eyes and groaned.

  Klinger bent to catch what the injured man was saying.

  “It was two …” Browne began weakly, and then his words trailed off. Suddenly, his eyes opened as though he had been startled. “You two, by gawd. Ethan … you and John … Sold out … didn’t you? I’ll be … damned …”

  Then Browne’s head rolled slightly to the right, his body went limp, and MacCallister eased him back down upon the ground. The deputy sheriff ran his hands along Browne’s body in an attempt to determine how he had been injured.

  “Dead … is he dead?” John asked, sounding a trifle breathless.

  “Passed out,” MacCallister responded. “We’ve got to get him up out of here and into town where a doctor can look him over. I can’t feel any blood, so I’m thinking the shot must’ve killed his horse and then the two of ’em rolled down into this canyon.” Ethan stood up and craned his neck to look up the ghostly sidehill, but it was pointless.

  He let out a sigh, then let out a string of curses before saying to John: “Why the devil didn’t he break his own fall? Why did he have to tumble this far down? He’s no flyweight. We’re going to have the devil’s own time getting him up out of here.”

  Klinger didn’t seem too disturbed by the news, but that was only because he was troubled about something else.

  “What did he mean when he said we sold out? Do you think he knew what he was saying?”

  MacCallister rocked back on his heels and gazed thoughtfully down at the unconscious Browne. “No, I don’t think he was. Seems he thinks we’ve taken the stage line’s side.”

  Ethan craned for another look up the sidehill, then said: “John, you were plumb right. Thorne sent his two hardcases up here for some no-good purpose. I reckon old man DeFore expected someone might try something up here, so he had his crew on watch. Travis, here, and his friends jumped the hardcases, chased them, evidently lost ’em in the night and were beating the underbrush for ’em when we heard the riders going north.”

  “And one of them got off a lucky shot,” Klinger observed, rounding out MacCallister’s deductions, “and knocked down Travis’s horse.”

  “Yeah, what luck is it that deposits a man as heavy as Travis Browne down in this danged place, then puts us here to pack him out again?” MacCallister bent over. “Well, come on, John, let’s get started with it.”

  They picked up DeFore’s range boss and began edging their way uphill. It was hard work. Even if Browne hadn’t been dishrag limp, he still would have been a solid burden. He was a thick-shouldered, oaken-legged man as heavy as lead. They had to stop often on the way up. By the time they eventually reached the place where they’d left their animals, MacCallister dropped down in the grass and remained motionless and breathing heavily for a full fifteen minutes. He appeared no longer interested in Travis Browne at all.

  When Klinger straightened up from a close examination of Browne and called out his father-in-law’s name, Ethan raised up to look and listen.

  “He’s got some cracked ribs, and I think his left arm is broken,” John informed him.

  “Too bad it wasn’t his right arm,” Ethan growled, pushing himself upright off the flinty earth. “That way his gun hand would be out of commission. I’ve got a feeling that from tonight on, we might wish all of DeFore’s men had busted their gun arms.”

  John pondered what his father-in-law had said as he got up and started toward their horses. Suddenly, he halted, turned, and looked back. “DeFore?” he said softly. “You thinking what I think you’re thinking, Ethan?”

  “Yeah. Thorne sent those riders of his up here where they got no business being to do something they probably had no business doing. They got caught … at least they got chased … and one of ’em downed DeFore’s foreman on DeFore’s land. And if that doesn’t add up to a shooting war, I don’t know what does.”

  MacCallister sighed and stepped over to consider Browne’s gray and slack face. He shook his head at the unconscious man. “I’ll tell you something else too, John,” he growled. “Ray Thorne didn’t really care whether those two men of his got chased or not. He didn’t even care whether they got caught or not. All he wanted was to force someone to fire a shot. Well, someone did. Thorne’s scheme worked. Here lies Dick DeFore’s foreman who old Dick admires and treats like a son, and Thorne’s finally succeeded in forcing a fight.” He paused to shake his head, then said: “Here, give me a hand putting Travis on my horse. Then we’d best get back to town.”

  They strained to settle Browne across the saddle and, after pausing briefly to catch their breath, lashed him there. They began their painfully slow descent back toward town, taking turns riding Ethan’s horse to keep Browne steady and in the saddle.

  * * * * *

  It was close to midnight before they arrived back in Winchester, and Browne had stirred only twice, very briefly. Each time he had recognized his companions and cursed them. The last time MacCallister had curtly explained how the two of them had happened to be up in Cheyenne Pass, but before he even had this recital half told, Browne passed out again.

  They routed the local doctor, carried Browne into the doctor’s treatment room in the lower part of his home, put him on a table, and sank down wearily to await the outcome of the medical man’s examination.

  Klinger’s prognosis turned out to be correct up to a point. Browne had a broken left arm and three cracked ribs. He also had a concussion, and this, the doctor explained, was why Browne kept passing out on the way back to town.

  “Fix him up,” ordered the former sheriff. “Do whatever has to be done, Doc.”

  Then the lawmen left, halted upon the empty plank walk outside, and looked at one another solemnly.

  “All right,” MacCallister declared. “We go after Thorne now.”

  Chapter Nine

  MacCallister and Klinger went across to the hotel and up to Ray Thorne’s room, but the gunfighter was not there. They returned to the outer hallway, where Klinger said: “At this time of night, he’s not at the saloons, because they were shutting down when we came in around midnight. So where would he be?”

  MacCallister shrugged. He was tired, and he ached all over from their recent exertions.
He was also disgruntled at not finding Thorne, but all he said was: “Go on home, John. We’ll hunt him down in the morning.”

  They parted outside the hotel, John homeward bound, Ethan heading for Winchester’s only all-night café. After he filled up on coffee and food, he returned to the hotel, went directly to his room, and retired. He was drowsy enough, he thought, to sleep for a week, but by five in the morning, he was wide awake, so he got up, shaved, went down to the dining room, and had a big breakfast.

  It bothered him that Ray Thorne had been out all night. There were, of course, several perfectly logical reasons for the gunfighter’s absence from his room, but MacCallister wasn’t so sure any of them applied.

  He went over to the jailhouse, stoked up the stove, placed the coffeepot on it, and sat down to have his after-breakfast smoke before his son-in-law showed up. He was sitting there putting together little pieces of thoughts, trying to form something whole, when the doctor walked in.

  MacCallister smiled but his eyes remained serious. “You’re up early,” he said to the medical man by way of greeting. Dr. Benjamin Shirley was a young man, very focused and often brusque. He was relatively new to Winchester.

  “When someone dumps an injured man on my doorstep in the middle of the night, I sometimes don’t get to bed at all,” he said, owlishly regarding the deputy sheriff.

  “Well, hell, Doc, we found him hurt up in Cheyenne Pass. What were we supposed to do?”

  “Exactly what you did, of course, but that still doesn’t improve my chances for sleep. Anyway, he’s in much better shape this morning. He has the constitution of an ox.”

  “Glad to hear he’s improving.”

  “He wants to see you, Deputy.”

  “I can imagine,” he murmured. “Last night, on the ride back into town, all he did when he was conscious was cuss out the sheriff and me.”

  “I know. He was still doing it this morning, until I told him it was you two who brought him in. Then he said he wanted to talk to you.”

  MacCallister nodded. He offered the doctor some coffee, but after glancing over at the black, unwashed pot on the stove, the medical man declined and departed.

  Ten minutes later Klinger arrived looking still sleep puffy. It was a sort of ritual that son-in-law and father-in-law scarcely spoke to one another until they’d had their coffee, so Ethan said nothing of the doctor’s visit until they’d each downed a full cup of java. Ethan then explained about Browne wanting to see them, so they headed out of the office and up the empty walkway to the doctor’s house.

  Browne was on a cot in the dispensary. He had been bandaged and looked in much worse shape from all the swaddling than he actually was. His ribs were not actually broken, and while his left arm was now in a sling and his head was bandaged, his concussion was not as serious as it might have been.

  He stared at the two lawmen from a solemn face, though, and offered neither of them a greeting. Instead, he said: “Thanks for bringing me in. Maybe I wasn’t too clear in what I said last night. I don’t rightly remember what I said.”

  The former sheriff propped his back against the wall and said: “Oh, you were clear enough. Couple of times you were pretty darned clear. Tell us what it was all about, Travis.”

  “Yeah,” grunted the injured man, “after you tell me what you two were doing riding around in the pass in the dark.”

  John said sharply: “We were looking for a couple of men who rode out of town an hour or two ahead of us.”

  Browne shifted his gaze from Ethan. He and Klinger looked steadily at one another for a long time, neither of them showing friendliness for the other. Then Browne said: “Who sent those men up into the pass?”

  “That stage company gunfighter is our best guess, though we have no proof,” answered the sheriff, still speaking crisply.

  “I thought so,” mumbled Browne, and he paused in thought before turning to MacCallister. “If you knew they were sent up there, why didn’t you stop ’em?”

  The deputy’s temper was becoming a little ruffled at this sharpness from Browne. “We were at DeFore’s ranch until late afternoon, if you’ll think back, and it takes time to ride from there back to town. Those two hirelings of Thorne’s left Winchester before we returned, so we couldn’t very well prevent them from going up to the pass. Now listen, Travis, we want some answers. Were you up there with your ranch crew guarding the pass?”

  “Yeah. Me and five others. Mr. DeFore said he wouldn’t put it past someone down here to try and get a coach through in the night.”

  “And when you first saw those two … what were they doing?”

  “Riding up the road with their heads alert. I hailed ’em, they broke away westward, and we chased ’em. I was out front, and we were gaining when the rearmost man turned and got off one shot. It killed my horse. The last thing I remember is rolling down that hillside into the canyon where you two found me.”

  As he pushed himself away from the wall, MacCallister said with exasperation: “Why the devil didn’t you give ’em enough rope so you could follow them and see what they were up to?”

  Browne bristled at this. “My orders were to keep the road closed. That’s what I was doing. If you want someone to play detective, you’d better import a real one.”

  Klinger stood by the door now, where he took one long last look at DeFore’s segundo. He lifted the latch as he said: “Did you get a good enough look at those two so you’d recognize them again?”

  Browne shook his head gingerly. “It was too dark, and they broke away too fast. I can tell you one thing, though. The fellow that had the slower horse had a bundle tied behind his cantle. When I first glimpsed it, I figured it was a bedroll and that the two of them were just drifters passing through the country. But as I got a little closer, when I was gaining on that one, I could see it was some kind of a sack tied fast to his rear skirts, too big for a bedroll, the wrong shape.”

  “Thanks, Travis. See you later,” MacCallister said, nodding his head as he went on out of the room with his son-in-law.

  When they were back in the roadway with the early-morning sunlight shining all around them, MacCallister halted, his brow wrinkling as he thought about what Browne had said.

  “What would they be carrying?” he said to John.

  The sheriff started to speak, but then looked northward up the roadway and grunted instead. Drawn around by his son-in-law’s action, he turned his gaze in that direction.

  Just entering town from the north plain were six riders. Prominently in the lead of those range men was old Richard DeFore, mounted on a leggy bay horse.

  MacCallister muttered an oath and swung a quick look over toward the Teton Saloon. He saw the swamper outside, emptying a bucket of dirty water into the street. He also observed that the hitchrack was empty, and there was no other sign that Thorne or any of his hirelings might be inside.

  He stepped off the plank walk and halted five feet out. Behind him the sheriff kept watching the slow-pacing gait of those six grim-faced horsemen. Up and down the opposing sideways, others were also watching those men, and rather quickly a silence descended over town. After all, the only time Richard DeFore came riding into Winchester like this was when he was stirred up, and it took no great powers of divination now to see that the old man’s granite face was unsmiling.

  Except for Dr. Shirley, the two lawmen, and maybe a few of the town snoops who always managed to find out the latest happenings, no one in Winchester yet knew what had occurred in the night. But obviously old man DeFore had something on his mind, so people began to speculate even before MacCallister halted the cavalcade by simply standing out in the roadway, barring its forward progress.

  DeFore didn’t say a word. He twisted, untied a bundle from the back of his saddle, swung it forward, and let it fall a foot in front of MacCallister.

  “Look inside,” he said coldly, not addressing either
of the two lawmen specifically.

  MacCallister stooped, opened the sack’s neck, and peered at the contents. He looked a long time. So long, in fact, that John headed over from the plank walk to see what the sack contained. He reached down and pulled out two taped bundles of dynamite sticks. There were four sticks in each bundle. Still in the sack was fifty feet of black fuse cord.

  DeFore dismounted, looked over at the doctor’s house. He turned toward Ethan and asked: “Is Travis in there?” Ethan nodded.

  DeFore instructed his men: “Tie up. I want three of you to search the town till you find that damned gunfighter. You other two, wait here. Don’t leave the horses.” He then swung toward the lawmen again. “I’ll see you two down at the jailhouse when I’m through in there.” Then the big man led his horse over the hitch rack where he dismounted and tied up his horse. As DeFore’s riders began dismounting, the old man unceremoniously pushed on into the doctor’s house.

  While this was going on, the sheriff placed the dynamite back in the bag before picking it up. He glanced over at Shirley’s house, made a quick nod at his father-in-law, and turned back toward the jailhouse.

  Walking down the middle of the road, both were conscious of more curious faces appearing on the plank walks as word spread of the brief exchange that had occurred out in the roadway.

  Once inside the jailhouse, Klinger emptied the sack upon a table and stood staring gravely, considering the conclusive evidence of what Ray Thorne had sent those two men up into the pass to accomplish.

  “But why?” he asked Ethan. “What good would dynamiting the pass do?”

  MacCallister was feeling more and more annoyed. Not entirely by what Thorne had plotted to do, but by Richard DeFore’s warlike appearance in town, as well as the older man’s contemptuous, lethal manner. He made a smoke, lighted it, and strolled over beside John to consider those taped-together dynamite sticks.

  “It’s fairly obvious,” he said. “They didn’t intend to block the road, John. Their purpose was to plant those charges about where they figured DeFore’s men might be. I’d guess Thorne meant to take another coach, his two remaining hardcases, and make another run up into the pass. Only this time Browne and his crew wouldn’t have stopped the coach. They’d have likely gotten themselves blown to smithereens. The two Thorne sent up there last night were probably supposed to hide in the rocks and await the coach. When Travis’s crew started forward to halt the stage, those two would cut short fuses, lob the explosives, and even if they didn’t kill all of DeFore’s men, they’d sure put ’em out of action long enough for the coach to get through.”